Beyond Space, Beneath Earth, Between Me and Myself: A COMPLEX INDIVIDUAL

    Last
December 15, 2006, the UP Administration confirmed what many of us had feared
all along: a TFI proposal that is unpopular, unscientific, and unethical, would
be railroaded. It is unpopular because it has virtually no approval from us
students. At best, the TFI proposal has the support from a handful of students:
the usual gang of people whose idea of improving UP is by installing liquid
soap dispensers in the toilets. It is unscientific because most of its
justifications are based on the false assumption that the economic standing of
the average Filipino today is the same as it was in 2004. With E-VAT, continued
inflation, and a wage increase which isn’t enough for our commuting expenses,
it does not take us a lot of economic jargon to discern how ridiculously false
that assumption is. It is unethical because it is unscientific. Engineers and
scientists would be very familiar with this: Garbage In, Garbage Out. With the
UP Admin using garbage-quality research, it is inevitable that a
garbage-quality TFI proposal would come out. And it is even more unethical
because the UP Admin has deceived the teachers to get their support for the
TFI. Before November 23, the UP Admin promised the teachers that they would get
salary increases once the TFI is approved. Even though they knew it was not
possible under the Salary Standardization Law, the UP Admin continued its lying
until it was exposed. And finally, it is unethical in the way it was passed.
The UP Admin convened the BOR Meeting in another location, the  College of Law, and informed the Student and Faculty Regents in a way that they would only be
involved in the voting process. No participation in debates. In fact, there was
no debate as it took the Board of Regents only 20 minutes to finish the entire
meeting, including the approval of the BOR.

    Apparently,
this issue did not concern the Law Student Government as it did not bother to
comment or release a statement about it. However, when the LSG did release a
statement, it was in condemnation of the protest action against the TFI, not
the TFI itself.  In its statement, the LSG condemned the protest as
“criminal” because it “tramples on propriety, ethics
and any notion of reason”. Yet, the same LSG did not even comment on how the UP
Admin has trampled on propriety, when the BOR convened like a meeting of
thieves, to prevent the Student and Faculty Regents from presenting their
arguments and the students’ outrage. The same LSG did not even comment on how
the UP Admin has trampled on ethics by lying to garner support for the TFI. And
finally, the same LSG did not even comment on how the UP Admin has trampled on
reason, by using obsolete data to justify the TFI.

    If
the LSG is really consistent in its “bias” for “propriety, ethics and any
notion of reason”, it should have included the TFI proposal and the conduct of
the BOR Meeting as targets of its criticism. Yet up to this day, the LSG has
not released a statement on both topics. Could it be that the LSG has simply
made a mistake in its analysis by not viewing the protest action in the context
of the outrageous behavior of the BOR? Or could it be that the LSG did not (and
will not) condemn the TFI, and how it was railroaded, because it supports the
TFI? If it is the first option, then the members of the LSG must rethink their
stance before they embarrass their fellow Law students and fellow UP students.
If it is the second option, then we ask the LSG to desist from being the
Admin’s puppets that divert the public’s attention from the outrageous and
unethical TFI.

    If
the LSG is really sincere, it should realize this: united we stand, divided we
fall. The UP Admin has already gained a few victories due to its attempts
to divide us students. The battle against TFI is not yet lost, but it will
certainly be, if we continue to remain divided.

    And
finally, the LSG, as well the entire UP Community, should be reminded of the
fable about trees. When the “better” trees allowed the “lower” trees to be cut
down, the “lower” trees were used as handles for the woodcutters’ axes,
allowing them to chop down the entire forest.

    Will
they let their fellow UP students be “chopped down”?

Idiotic, no scientific
basis.

    It starts at the
very top. A certain Emmanuel De Dios (he claims to be a Professor at a certain
college, but I think even my high school would not hire people who do not use
the scientific method in research) claims that the incoming batch of UP
students can shoulder the ToFI because they are coming from comfortable
backgrounds. His basis? Data from 2004. The Dean of the College of Mass Communications, who is pro-ToFI, unwittingly killed his own argument
(thank God for the senility of old age) by mentioning that the nominal value of
UP students’ allowances increased over the years. Note the word: nominal.
Aside from the yearly inflation of prices, there was also the E-VAT and the
spate of oil price hikes. In the same period of time, minimum wages were
actually raised by 75 pesos. WOW.  It reflects even in their handful of
supporters in the student body. These students can only raise and defend their
positions in the internet (i.e blogs and forums) where they have the luxury of
consulting dictionaries (to fix their grammar, because their manufactured
accent wont work here) and tons of literature to reply to even a simple
argument made by a high school student. But in public, they have at least
enough sense to realize that they are as intellectually unarmed as Sergio Cao
during the University Convocation. To even attempt to answer the lay-man’s
argument against ToFI would result in their stuttering, changing topics,
focusing on the grammar of their opponents, and even plain and simple
embarassed silence.

Sneaky,
underhanded, unethical

    As mentioned above,
students who support ToFI have shown a total lack of capability in defending
their positions. Thus, they resort to sneaky means that would have made
Virgilio Garcilliano proud. But we must not be surprised. Like father, like
bastard. They could only have learned this from the likes of Emerlinda Roman
and Sergio Cao. As we have already mentioned, Roman and Cao may be stupid, but
they are not stupid enough to realize that their arguments would not stand
public scruntity. Thus, they changed the venue of the BOR Meeting upon
realization that the barricade was a reality, locked out (they even turned off
their cellphones) the Student and Faculty Regents (its like a Student Council
election with the students not being allowed to vote), and voted for the ToFI
while there was no quorum (there were only 6 regents present, 7 are required).
And all in a span of 20 minutes! Imagine that!

And finally, fascist and
elitist.

    Are you even surprised? Its
unfortunate that our President comes from the College of Business Administration. The senile old fool must have mistaken our beloved University
for a simple business enterprise. Does she (or for that matter, any Econ
student) actually understand the term social services? Its supposed to
offset the effect of low wages by providing the poor with affordable health
services, housing and EDUCATION. But now I actually believe that our
educational system is in shambles. Imagine, people who do not even understand
that are officials of our University. And such a discriminatory proposal is to
be expected when you commission a liar like De Dios to make the study.
Remember, it was De Dios and his ilk the applauded the E-VAT. They even
promised us more funds for education once E-VAT was passed. Now, more than a
year later, not a single centavo has gone to UP. And finally, the illusion that
the UP Admin gives a shit about the students has fallen off. The emcee of the
University Convocation admitted that the strong opposition registered against
the ToFI would not really mean anything. And during an attempted dialogue with
Sergio Cao over the Collegian funds, he simply ran over a student that was in
the way of his car. And of course, the students who support TFI are all
a-quiver with delight over that incident. If the student was killed, it would
mean one less student whose arguments they cannot answer.

    To anyone reading this, as
long as we make excuses on why we are not actively participating in the fight
against ToFI, we are giving the UP Admin an excuse to ram it down our throats.
The outpouring of outrage last Friday was a little too late. By that time, the
ToFI had already been railroaded.

    But if
there is a lesson to be learned, it is that our strength is in numbers. We
succeded in exposing the unethical nature of the UP Admin by blockading Quezon Hall and challenging them to conduct their
meeting in public. If everyone who joined the protests last Friday could
mobilize at least 2 more of his/her friends, we can actually succeed in
pressuring the UP Admin into repealing the ToFI.

-AB-UPD